Kodan-shi – a ghost story narrator in a traditional Japanese style – Ichiryusai Teisui does the framing narrative for a horror tales directed by Teruyoshi Ishii. The first one concerns the (well, one of many, really) origin story of the titular Kuchisake-onna, the internationally popular Slit-Mouthed Woman. Here, she’s the victim of a cruel lover and a plastic surgeon, taking her revenge and then not really stopping, as is the wont of her type of Japanese supernatural being.
The second tale concerns the haunting of a male killer of women by slugs, which certainly isn’t something you see every day.
Thirdly, we encounter a budding serial killer in junior age, who eventually kills his baby sister in a fit of jealousy, driving his mother mad. Obviously, getting strangled by a baby ghost is in his future.
The three tales are all very simple, as befits stories told to us by a very traditional storyteller, in tone falling between urban legend, what we’d now call creepypasta and traditional Japanese kaidan. Thanks to surprisingly moody direction by Ishii and Teisui’s dramatically spooky – even if one doesn’t speak Japanese – narration, the tales feel archetypal rather than simplistic. As is often the case with Japanese horror of the cheap and cheerful yet not extreme direct-to-video type of the 90s and early 00, these feel as much like modern variations of folkloric storytelling as the cheaply done bits of horror they are, suggesting a certain dignity and cultural connection that can surprise when one keeps in mind this was most probably just made as cheap video store or cable channel fillers.
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